It seems that teenagers typically have the biggest problem seeing much value in education. Partly this is due to the erratic hormonal surges they're suffering, which (along with various social events) can whipsaw a kid from elation to black depression with dizzying speeds and frequency. It can be difficult to be rational and objective under such circumstances. Another reason may often be sleep-deprivation. Teens need more sleep than many other age groups, and yet perversely may often get less than they did in younger years, due to a collision of natural changes in their sleep cycles and the demands of school and work schedules, as well as natural increased yearnings to explore and participate in a wider variety of social events and situations.

The average adolescent requires up to 9.25 hours of sleep per night, but suffers from a natural sleep cycle which makes them fall asleep later at night than they did during younger years. Combine this fact with early awakening for school, and you get sleepy, irritable, and uninterested students. In research studies, better rested students were better behaved and more alert for teachers, and making better grades, as well as suffering fewer bouts of depression. As an added bonus, later school hours reduced violent crime due to teenagers too-- as basically better rested and clearer thinking teens tended not to make as many mistakes, were supervised by adults for a greater portion of their waking hours, and spent a larger portion of their total free time asleep rather than on the streets. .

Teens who consistently get inadequate sleep may suffer permanent mental and physical damage, or limitations on their ultimate potential in many matters.

Those who sleep less than six hours a night suffer reduced lifespans compared to those who get at least seven hours. Regular and sustained sleep deprivation affects the body in ways similar to accelerated aging.

Getting six to eight hours of sleep per night improves learning and memory capacities, compared to getting less. In areas involving particularly challenging material, as much as a 20%-50% difference in learning and memory can occur on a daily basis between one person getting at minimum six hours sleep a night, and the other getting less.

Inadequate sleep appears to be afflicting many middle-class children by the time they reach sixth grade, possibly reducing their attention spans and ability to learn. This sleep loss gradually ramps up between second and sixth grades as children typically awaken at the same times but go to sleep later and later.

The greater level of general anxiety kids often suffer in the modern world as compared to past generations, may also be a source of generational dis-connect on subjects like education and others.

Between the 1950s and 2000, something happened to make today's young adults and children more anxiety-ridden than they were in previous generations. During the 1980s average children possessed a higher level of anxiety than child psychiatric patients of thirty years before.

It is thought that child anxieties reflect those of society overall. If this is true, then social stresses on adults are growing. The increased isolation due to high divorce rates, plus worries about crime and disease, may all be factors here. It appears that people increasingly distrust those around them, too.

Exposure to violence, both real and virtual, seems one source of this anxiety. Disruptions in personal friend and family ties, another. Lower quantity and quality of interaction with parents breeds still more concerns for youngsters. Many of our young seem to feel less safe and less connected to others than previous generations.

This mounting anxiety is apparently contributing to rising rates of substance abuse and depression among the younger population.

-- Children's Anxiety at All-Time High By Suzanne Rostler, Reuters Health/Yahoo! Health Headlines, December 15, 2000, citing the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2000;79:1007-1021

Teen disdain for learning may also come from the fact they know they've already gained much since childhood, and are becoming increasingly aware of the intellectual, financial, and social status limits of those around them, including authority figures like parents and teachers, as well as their own peer group. They also are beginning to feel some chafing at having already been in school roughly half to two thirds their lives by that point. They positively ache for the opportunity to have more control over their present, and do more intrinsically interesting things with it, than sit at a desk all day. Another factor is the steadily increasing difficulty in their classes. During the teen years school is getting perceptibly harder than before-- at least for many. This is uncomfortable and often stressful. Indeed, the stress can often go off the scale in many of the environments teens encounter-- especially in their personal perceptions of such situations.

At the same time, teens also see widespread glorification of impulse and excess in western news and entertainment media, where it seems countless numbers of strangers young and old are getting rich and famous acting in precisely the unrestrained manner the teens feel compelled to do. It'll often be many years later before the teens' adult selves realize that such celebrities really make up only a miniscule percentage of the population, and usually obtain their riches and privileges though inheritance, crime, luck, or physical appearance, more than anything else. And that these avenues of advancement are essentially unavailable, impractical, or unwise for most everyone else.

In developed nations like the USA, many corporations are exploiting the way TV, radio, videos, games, and the internet have become defacto babysitters of many children due to the frequent absence or inattention of their parents, stemming from both often working and being otherwise time-pressed. These corporations use the latest child psychology information available in state-of-the-art multimedia to seduce children via violence, addictive mental hooks, and gaudy sensuality into shrill harassment of parents for the purchase of various products/services the corporations are pushing. This is leading to more than 50% of parents admittedly buying items for their children which they themselves disapprove of, but feel compelled to buy to avoid disappointing their children.

This ongoing virtual child abuse appears to be desensitizing children to violence and its results in general, perhaps leading to some of them later on inflicting great tragedies upon themselves and others as teens or adults. In short, this corporate abuse of children today may be leading, at worst, to a new 'lost' generation of violent criminals tomorrow. Or, at best, to a future generation of adults who themselves may become poor excuses for individual human beings-- and even worse parents.

All these elements pose formidable obstacles to teens sensing the full value in things like education and others.

This would not be such a big deal if the youngsters could easily return to their schooling after their hormonal surges subsided, and they'd broken free of the typically problematic peer groups they'd joined earlier, largely due to accident and circumstance.

But often such a return is not so easy. Many high school drop outs feel humiliated to attend night school or other programs to obtain a GED-- largely because they realize the awful mistake they made the first time around, by not getting their diploma when it would have been easiest and cheapest to do so. Then there's the matter of the new demands on their resources they face as adults. Most by that time have been forced to get low wage jobs to pay their bills, and many have even stumbled into parenthood-- both factors sure to strain them financially and time-wise-- making it even more difficult to set aside the resources necessary to take up where they left off in school.

Some of the former teens may even have spiraled into deep trouble with the law or drug abuse or both by this time, thereby possibly damaging their reputations and their health, and so adding still more to the difficulties of starting afresh.

Another problem to add to this pile of dropout despair is the fact that at least some subjects are much harder for adult minds to learn than teen minds. Foreign languages for example. Much about a person's intellectual potential becomes set by adulthood. So those teens who miss their chance for early learning usually will find their practical educational choices substantially narrowed later on.

Sadly, almost none of this can be explained before-the-fact to many teenagers. The majority may have to learn it for themselves through 'the school of hard knocks', as many chastened former teens refer to life.

But returning to schooling later in life and trying to recapture some of the potential which was earlier discarded is not entirely hopeless for those smart enough and determined enough to do it. It's just that it's usually a much greater struggle for them than it would have been the first time around. It's a shame so many teens are forced to learn the value of education the hard way.